By Djungelskog Bear
Every election year, thousands of women cast their ballots and venture to Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester, New York to place their “I voted” stickers on the headstone of women’s suffrage heroine, Susan B. Anthony. They have perpetuated idealized versions of Anthony and her white colleagues, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Carrie Chapman Catt. Evidence of their ruthless racial bias has been pushed to the shadows, enabling the erasure of their women of color counterparts who also fought tirelessly for the right to vote.
Susan B. Anthony only appeared to care for Black people when it was in favor for her. In 1864, Women’s Loyal National League President Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anthony, the league’s secretary, both signed a congressional petition in support of the 13th Constitutional Amendment to abolish slavery. Their petition garnered nearly 400,000 signatures. However, when the 15th Amendment was ratified, giving African American men the right to vote, Anthony, Stanton, and their colleagues were enraged.
Lori Ginzberg, a history and women’s studies professor at Penn State University, spoke with NPR in 2011 about her book “Elizabeth Cady Stanton: An American Life”. There, she shared quotes in which Stanton stated that “educated, virtuous white women were more worthy of the vote” and her fear for future women if these “degr*ded black men were allowed to vote”.
Years prior, when speaking with Frederick Douglass at an 1886 meeting of the American Equal Rights Association, Susan B. Anthony famously asserted: “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the n*gro and not the woman”. Of course, in the 19th century when only white men were able to cast a ballot, there were disagreements among campaigners about which disenfranchised group deserved the vote first.
Whether Anthony was referring specifically to the white woman or all women, regardless of race, is irrelevant when you consider her abandonment of her abolitionist roots when black men were heinously lynched across the nation for attempting to exercise their newly constitutionalized right to vote.
Some people might argue that women such as Susan B. Anthony were products of the times in which they lived. That she didn’t live in an era that welcomed progressive ideals and outspoken ideals. This is a sad excuse. Compassion wasn’t invented in the 21st century. When African Americans were facing injustice at an inopportune time for her, Susan B. Anthony did nothing. Sometimes silence is more damaging than words.
At the onset of the 20th century, Anthony was aligning herself with the likes of Belle Kearney, a Mississippi-born women’s suffrage advocate... and an outright white supremacist. In the words of Carrie Chapman Catt, the founder of the League of Women Voters, “White supremacy will be strengthened, not weakened, by women’s suffrage”.
I believe that true equity in women’s rights will never be achieved unless it is intersectional, validating, and fighting for the plights of all individuals who identify as women.
Next election day, when you’re looking for a home for your “I voted” stickers, I suggest you make your way to Oak Hill Cemetery Crematory in Battle Creek, Michigan, where Sojourner Truth lies, a fearsome champion for women’s rights whose 1851 speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” is still heralded by educators and historians to this day.
Or Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois, where you’ll find the headstone of Ida B. Wells, the activist and journalist who led an anti-lynching campaign following the ratification of the 15th Amendment and refused to be hidden by white suffragists who instructed Black supporters to march in the rear of the 1913 parade in Washington, D.C.
Or place your sticker within the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden in Ruleville, Mississippi, and pay homage to the incomparably brave civil rights activist. She overcame police brutality. She was fired from a job for trying to register to vote. And President Johnson himself tried to draw attention away from her speeches. She was still, without a doubt, one of the most powerful speakers of the era.
The pursuit of justice does not have to be an exclusionary journey, and although Susan B. Anthony couldn’t see that, doesn’t mean you have to settle for her narrow view of victory.
I’m not saying Susan B. Anthony was the most racist fraud that ever lived. There were many more racist, white women’s suffragettes who I have named here. There were also white women’s suffragists who didn’t resort to racism to sustain their agenda. Jessie Daniel Ames was a suffragist from Texas who founded the Association for Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. It was fully integrated and peaked at 40,000 members.
What I want is for the names of the women of color who withstood violence and disenfranchisement while fighting for the right to vote--often without the help of their white counterparts--to be given their due. And that’s the bare minimum!
Learn their names.
And think about who really deserves the gratitude when the election comes around this time...
Little, B. (2017, November 08). How Early Suffragists Sold Out Black Women. Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://www.history.com/news/suffragists-vote-black-women
Fields-White, M. (2011, March 25). The Root: How Racism Tainted Women's Suffrage. Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/2011/03/25/134849480/the-root-how-racism-tainted-womens-suffrage
Celebrate Women's Suffrage, but Don't Whitewash the Movement's Racism. (2019, September 20). Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/celebrate-womens-suffrage-dont-whitewash-movements-racism
Staples, B. (2018, July 28). How the Suffrage Movement Betrayed Black Women. Retrieved September 10, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/suffrage-movement-racism-black-women.html
Photo obtained and edited from:
https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/c_fill,g_auto,w_1200,h_675,ar_16:9/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.cnn.com%2Fcnnnext%2Fdam%2Fassets%2F200215112223-02-susan-b-anthony.jpg